Company mates were likely to be relatives or men the soldiers had known for years. Moreover, this claim also neglects other factors unique to the Civil War that could prove just as traumatic for nineteenth-century soldiers as those in twentieth-century wars, notably, companies were formed locally. This explanation, of course, fails to consider that other forms of warfare could be just as terrifying to its participants. Civil War soldiers faced none of these so, the reasoning went, had fewer reasons to suffer psychological collapse.
For one reason, the American Civil War lacked the weapons of mass destruction, including lethal gases, airplanes, and tanks, which stoked fear and anxiety among WWI soldiers and contributed to mental breakdowns of many. Yet for years historians failed to consider the possibility that Northern and Southern soldiers and veterans suffered psychologically as a result of their military engagement. Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival CollectionĪbundant evidence suggests that Civil War soldiers, like their twentieth-century counterparts, exhibited symptoms that today we would associate with war trauma, notably post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a diagnosis that emerged out of the experiences of the Vietnam War. Unidentified shell-shocked British WWI soldier, Wounded at Courcelette, 1916.
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